Nuances

Hey there..... you have all heard enough from me. It is now time for my son to start writing. So put your hands together for the junior solitary reaper. Hello everybody. I am the junior solitary reaper. How about I describe the important day to day activities of a 7 month old i.e, me? You see, not many people know how action packed our lives can be! So let me start from the time I wake up which is usually about 6 in the morning. I make sure amma knows that I am awake by giving her a wake up call. By the time I roll over a couple of times in my bed and wish a very good morning to all my toys I have a heavy smelly diaper. Lucky for me amma has a sharp sense of smell. She quickly changes my nappy and ah what a feeling it is to get into a fresh new one. She then takes me to appa's room where I play with him in the bed for some time. I then enjoy a fresh sip of milk which generally makes me doze off... zzzzz..... By the time I wake up which is about 20 minutes later, lo behold, amma...

What can one do if the sky opens up and decides to shower you with nothing but rain for weeks together? This was our situation going into the semi-finals of the Champions trophy in Cardiff. Having booked the tickets 3 months in advance without an inkling of who would play and having driven to Cardiff for 4 hours after work, we had everything to lose due to the famous English weather (definitely pun intended). We slept really well and woke up fresh to be welcomed by bleak weather as usual on the day of the cricket match. By the time we got through a really heavy breakfast, it had stopped raining. Hmm, do we feel happy? Naah , not yet. After all this the English weather  we are talking about.  Well, armed with a good old traditional paper map, we trudged all the way to the stadium which I must agree was one of the best experiences I have ever had. Walking through the myriad streets of Cardiff, we were not even bothered that we walked more than we should have had to reach the s...

Tata, a man who lead a highly disciplined life, a human with immeasurable patience, a leading example to all his family members, an earnest student whose quest for knowledge and information assimilation did not die down until his last minute. By this time, any reader would have understood that this great man is no more with us. Especially, my grandfather, is no more with us. It has taken me quite some time to come to terms with this fact and put down my fond memories into words. Where shall I start? From the early days of inculcating his discipline in me or the innumerable hours that he patiently spent with me during my childhood or all those times that we spent together watching sports on the tele? I am sure the list will be endless. I still vividly remember the routine he had set up for me as soon as I started going to school. The study table and two sharpened pencils used to welcome me as soon as I used to come home in the afternoon from school. These of course was in prepara...

Lake District I am writing this blog at the risk of turning people off! Surprised??? This is the next edition of my travelogue and this time our car made way towards Lake District. As this region is to the south of Scotland it is a general perception that the landscape is like that of Scotland. This brings me back to the first line of my blog. As I have already written about our journey to Scotland, my faithful readers might quit reading this blog assuming it to be very similar to the previous one. I couldn't me more wrong than that!!! Rather than the actual journey it is the planning that gets me pumping. Things were simplified by the fact that we planned to find accommodation in one place and travel to the rest. Easier said than done! It seemed as though every traveller in the world was heading to the Lake District and unless you were looking to lodge yourself in a manor rather than a B&B you were out of luck. But, we were destined to be lucky and found a cosy ale...

Eulogy This is in fond memory of one of the two strongest women I have encountered in my life. I had to bid goodbye to one of them half a decade ago and now I am bidding farewell to the other. Bye bye Grandma! For me there is certainly a beginning to the relationship I had with her but by no means an end. She is a part of me and whatever I am today is mostly because of her. So she might have discarded her physical self from this material world but her presence will always be felt in my life. She was a loving wife albeit never showing her emotions to the outer world, a loving mother, a caring mother-in-law, the greatest grandmother and a sweet great-grandmother. She was the umbrella that kept the family safe for as long as she was independent. She was the marriage broker who passionately brought so many future couples together. She was the person who could fit a larger wardrobe into a smaller door with novel ideas that even an engineer may have not thought about. Her melodious ...

( For a better reading experience I would suggest you to open a separate tab on your browser and view the pictures of our trip to Scotland. Then you will be able connect better with what I am going to describe. https://picasaweb.google.com/beadarsh/AppaAmmaSTripToPBoroAndScotland?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnGzuG6uKnXaw#5604233475221641954 ) Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Imagine miles of blue sky splattered with patterns of clouds. As you change the angle of your neck to the eye level, add endless peaks covered with brown moss with the tops covered with patches of snow. Then sprinkle a few valleys between these mountains and fill it up with sheep that know nothing other than chomping grass and growing innumerable coats of fleece. Finally dot the landscape with small cottages that are scattered miles apart. Now cover the entire picture with a continuous drizzle. This is my description of the highlands of Scotland in the summer months. It is funny that you don't get tired o...

H aving lived in the UK for almost 4 months, the 3 unpredictable Ws have always struck me. I first heard about them from a guest but later realised that there was nothing new in them. Initially they sounded mysterious but take a moment to look around and they stare directly in your face! So this edition of ‘Nuances’ will be trying to demystify them. W eather is the first unpredictable W. When I arrived in Petey Town in the month of October, veterans of this place predicted the worst winter ever. Indeed it was the worst ever winter for the whole of Britain except.....(hold your breath) of course in Petey town. It snowed for a paltry 3 days!!! I could hardly enjoy the snow leave alone build a snow man or shoot snow balls at my hubby. Again when people were struggling to step out of their houses in all parts of Britain, it was a stifling, gut wrenching 9C in Petey town which almost sucked the air out of my lungs. By any standards that’s too hot!!! (Here, I might really sound crazy sin...